Post 8 A DEARTH OF DIVERSITY

WINTER IS COMING          November 2018

Winter is coming
A low bright blinding sun
Shows briefly through fast moving cloud
Winter is coming

Late garden roses still bud
Mahonia’s yellow blossom is alive with bees
Fuchsia and Aster still show
Stars in dark skies coldly glitter
Fiery sunsets glow
And the North wind is bitter
Winter is coming

A fox’s yelping bark sounds from Bangeston wood
Huge flocks of corvids wheel and turn
Over harvested fields of Winter wheat, potatoes and maize
Starlings fly to the Corse
Large and small murmurations pass overhead
The sound of their wings is heard
Before the sight of birds
Winter is coming

The brief Autumn colour of leaves
Is stripped from trees by Northwest gales
The bare branches let in welcome light
Before the evenings fall
Winter thrushes arrive; and chase each other
Through garden cover
Goldfinch tear at teasel and evening primrose seeds
And the opportunistic robin
Follows at our feet as we cut and clear
Winter will soon be here.

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I thought I’d start this blog with that description of our garden life in 2018. This year, even in our ‘untidy’ patch, we have noticed a decline in birds and insects; less swallows in Summer, fewer house sparrows, greenfinch and other garden birds; and, in the fields around, a lessening of flocks of golden plover, lapwings, skylarks, and the starlings; all suffering from a lack of insects, invertebrates and habitat.

When we first moved here seventeen years ago, many of the fields were full of diverse flora; orchid, scabious, campion, daisy, corn marigold, cornflower, hay rattle, yarrow, knapweed and poppy; no longer described as ‘common’.

But now we have come to dread the rattling sound of the ‘sprayer’ as it regularly travels along the road, to eliminate more of the ‘weeds’ that farmers have been brainwashed into believing are the ‘enemy’; and decreasing our biodiversity in the process.

We see and hear on our media the extreme results of this loss; flood and fire, desertification, habitat destruction on a massive scale. But, for me, it is this creeping death; this seemingly inevitable loss of that we take for granted. Can we turn it around? Will ‘rewilding’ be taken seriously? I hope I will live long enough to see that the answer is YES! 

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And, lastly another take on ‘Diversity’

SKIN COLOUR (what is)?      October ‘21

I am not black. I am not white
And nor is any human being
Why do so many denigrate
Skin colour; when it’s in the seeing

There’s tints of every coloration
From deepest brown to lightest pink
That we perceive in any nation
It’s no excuse for racist think

They say that beauty is skin deep
And certainly we need to know
That bigotry is base and cheap
And feeds on ignorance to grow

So, when the mob, by media led
Decide their hue’s the only ‘right’
Remember that their fears are fed
By ‘facts’ that are not black or white

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